Tom Clancy - Command Authority

Small fires from the Molotov cocktails thrown over the wall burned around the property. A group of garbage barrels on the south side of the Lighthouse was fully engulfed in flames, and grass along both sides of the driveway smoldered.

One of the Delta men on the second floor had been shot high on the shoulder, snapping his collarbone, and a security contractor had taken a ricochet round into the back of his hand, breaking bones and tearing flesh. Although both men had been taken to the Lighthouse’s infirmary, they were being treated with a small trauma kit on the chest rig of one of the Delta operators, because the first-aid boxes had already been loaded into one of the Delta Force Yukons that now sat exposed to fire on the eastern side of the compound.

Rex, the contractor on the roof with the scoped rifle, scanned distant rooftops and balconies through his nine-power optic, searching for snipers. This was a slow process, because he had to low-crawl under an air-conditioning unit to look in different directions. Mutt was there with binoculars, but he, too, seemed to always be facing away from the source of gunfire when it came. They got the distinct impression the sniper fire coming in was coordinated, and done for the purpose of keeping heads down.

A Delta man on an upstairs balcony took a round into the steel plate on his chest. His partner dragged him back into an office and checked him out, then reported in to Midas.

Midas was in the communications room on the second floor with Bixby when he received this news. He looked to the CIA man. “This fire is too damn accurate to be coming from a couple of untrained civilian assholes.”

Bixby nodded. “We could be looking at local SWAT or Ukrainian Army deserters or FSB-trained irregulars.” He added, “Hell, it could even be Spetsnaz that came over the border from Russia on a destabilizing mission. Make no mistake about this, whoever is out there might very well be looking to overrun this installation.”

John Clark, Ding Chavez, and Dom Caruso appeared in the doorway. Clark asked, “What do you guys hear from Langley?”

Midas said, “Expedited helos are on the way. We’ve got two Ukrainian Air Force Mi-8s inbound to pick us up. ETA twenty minutes.”

Caruso said, “Anything you want me to get out of the vehicles before we get out of here?”

Midas shook his head. “We’re going to toss C-4 and demo every bit of that as soon as we take off. I don’t want anyone going outside until we have some air cover.”

A few minutes later, Clark, Chavez, and Caruso stood in the small lobby, watching the occasional Molotov cocktail arc over the wall and explode onto the ground into a raging fireball. The gunfire that cracked around the neighborhood still seemed to be coming from all different directions. No one was manning the front gate now; the security contractors were all above on the balconies with the CIA men and the Delta AFO personnel.

A crowd of rioters in civilian dress, virtually all of them appearing to be young males, pressed against the locked iron gate, but so far no one had tried to breach the compound.

The phone in Clark’s pocket rang, and he stepped into the stairwell to find a quieter place to talk before answering it.

“Clark.”

“Hey, Mr. C. This is Sam.”

“What’s up?”

“Gavin has been tracking the GPS transmitters we put on the suspicious vehicles yesterday. Two of them left the city about four a.m., but we had no idea where they were heading. Now Gavin thinks he’s figured out their destination.”

“Where are they going?”

“Sevastopol. They will get there in about an hour.”

“Interesting. I had a feeling this attack involves goons from the Seven Strong Men. That pretty much confirms my suspicion.”

“You need us on the way? We can head to the airport now, charter something to get us down there on the double.”

Clark said, “No. You guys keep doing what you’re doing. We’re pinned down in here, but air extract is en route. Don’t know where the helos will take us, but when we land I’ll let you know if we need help getting back to Kiev.”

“Roger that. You guys keep your heads low.”

As the extraction neared, the armed men in the Lighthouse spent their time scanning for any targets in the surrounding buildings and hills. Without a weapon in their hands, the three Campus operators felt somewhat useless, just standing around waiting to get flown out of danger, but this changed when another call of a “man down” came over the radio. Ding and Dom raced up the stairs to the third floor and found a CIA technical officer who had been in an interior hallway when a lucky round penetrated a balcony window, then an interior wall, and finally lodged itself in the center of his chest. The middle-aged man was unresponsive with his eyes wide open when he was found by a contractor, and Ding and Dom spent several minutes trying to get the man breathing again. But the bullet had shredded his heart, and there was nothing they could do for him. They helped two other CIA techs drag the body downstairs—a slow, difficult, and exhausting task—and then they put him in a body bag, positioning him by the front door so they could get him on the helo quickly when it landed.

The two fat gray Mi-8 helicopters approached from the north just after three p.m. The men on the roof notified Midas, who immediately began pulling operators, contractors, and CIA personnel from their positions on the balconies and ordering them down to the lobby. The two wounded men were helped down the stairs and positioned next to the body of the fallen technician.

Midas spoke directly with the pilots of the helos and warned them about the sporadic incoming fire, and the Ukrainians’ Mi-8s flew in with their side doors open and their mounted machine guns scanning for any threats. But as Midas watched them approach, he thought they didn’t seem as careful as they could have been, considering the danger. They flew close together, directly over the riot in the park, and made just one slow circle to search for threats before one of the craft began descending toward the Lighthouse.

Midas got the impression the helo pilots thought just their mere presence would discourage anyone from firing while they were in the air above the installation, and Midas radioed a warning to them that they were approaching a hot LZ and needed to act accordingly.

He saw no change in the tactics in the helicopters above.

There was only enough room between the vehicles parked in the parking circle in front of the Lighthouse building and the front wall of the compound to safely land one helo at a time, so the first Ukrainian Air Force Mi-8 descended while the other circled above to provide cover.

For a moment, there was no gunfire; it even seemed the shouts of the crowd softened as the gray helo came in for a landing. In the CIA building, Midas opened the lobby door, and he and Bixby stepped out under the portico so he could talk the helo down.

As the Mi-8 descended below four hundred feet, right before the eyes of Midas and Bixby, a bright speck of light appeared over the eastern wall of the Lighthouse. It raced up from between two apartment buildings on the far side of the park in front of the CIA compound. It shimmied in the air as it climbed into the blue sky toward the helicopter.

Someone on board the Mi-8 either saw it coming or else the pilot had some sort of onboard warning indicator. The helo banked hard to the right. Bixby and Midas both saw the door gunner fly back inside the cabin of the aircraft as it spun away, trying to get out of the line of fire of the ascending rocket.

The rocket raced just past the tail rotor and shot harmlessly skyward.